Campaign: Astrodia
DM: Tommy
Players: Jim, Roy, Kat, Emily, Yemko, Kenyaita (full table — Asha back in the spotlight after Kenyaita missed Session 7)
Date: July 22, 2026 (Session 8)
Housekeeping — The Training Wheels Come Off
Before play, DM Tommy called a table check-in. Everyone’s enjoying the campaign and eager to head north. Two structural notes for the road ahead:
- The campaign wiki is live. Jim updates the knowledge base (player pages, NPCs, locations) after every session and publishes it, so it grows over time — the party now has a reference to consult between games.
- “Training wheels off.” The campaign isn’t changing, just widening in scope. Tommy will minimize backseat-driving (no more obvious hints), so players are responsible for knowing their own abilities and remembering to use them. Everyone is now Level 3 with a subclass.
New Mechanic — Satyr Rolls (S.A.T.O. tasks)
With the students back at campus and the party heading north, The Fallen can now deploy the S.A.T.O. as remote “hirelings.” The rules:
- Each in-game day, any student assigned a task rolls a d100 against a hidden target number.
- Difficulty sets the starting target and the rate it drops each day (easy tasks might start near 50 and fall by 10/day; hard ones start ~90–95 and crawl down by ~2/day). Some tasks may be secretly impossible — the number never drops, and the party will eventually have to reassign that student.
- Tasks must fit each student’s specialty, and the party can only assign work via the Sending Stones — one student per day, and using the stone for a task spends the day’s single use.
- Crucially, tasks are only things the party could do themselves — this offloads background legwork without removing player agency.
Standing assignments (from the end of Session 7):
- Tobin — investigate what and how many the “Sinful Spoils” are.
- Simone — trace who donated the star-tablet Asha translated (the artifact that got her expelled). (Tommy hinted the party may already hold the answers to these in visions and books they’ve been sent.)
The six recruitable students and their wheelhouses: Simone (numeromancy / library), Tobin (administration / investigative journalism), Rosie (invention & tinkering), Quintilius (performance & dead languages), Myrna (history & lore), and Ersmatok (biology & plants).
Reintroductions — Who We Are Now
At Level 3, the table went around and re-declared characters, secrets, and who-knows-what:
- Red — druid, now Circle of the Moon; expect a lot more wild shape.
- Leif — a Warlock who has accepted it, Pact of the Chain, with his familiar Howl. Squishy. (The table joked that “coming out as a warlock” was its own kind of coming out.)
- Úlfr — the Goliath skald delivered his own introduction aloud:
“They named me Úlfr Kveld, the Evening Wolf. And for most of my life I believed my hands were the only true thing about me. I was raised in a house that prized verse, and I threw the gift back in their faces — certain that a creature shaped like me had no business shaping words. But grief has a way of teaching what pride refuses to learn. I have come to understand that the strength in my arms and the verses of my throat are not two selves at war, but a single fire that can either burn or warm. So I carry both now, without shame. I will break a shield-wall when I must, and I will make a song of it after — for the axe speaks the last word, but the poet decides what is remembered.”
- Drolta — former High Priestess of Nephthys (the Phoenix Queen, both Destroyer and Reviver); orphaned young, she found family and purpose at the temple until it was attacked by vampires, who killed nearly everyone — including a child she loved. She nearly died and was brought back between life and death as a dhampir, tasked by Nephthys to learn why the temple was attacked and what the vampires wanted. Only Aren and Leif know she is a dhampir — notably, Úlfr still does not. As a celestial-patron warlock, she now has healing on tap.
- Aren — cleric on a patron’s mission to deal with the undead; blunt, uninterested in small talk, and — as the party would soon learn the hard way — she really hates spiders. Leaning ever more into radiant/light magic.
Where We Left Off
The party teleported to the Quandrix campus and immediately left to avoid Academy eyes. Their road runs north — a ~5-day overland trek (24–25 miles/day on foot) to the Nephthys temple on the edge of the White Forest, with the recovering town of Freedale about halfway (a Drolta history roll placed it ~2.5 days out). The party debated faster travel — horses only double foot speed, and a cart-hauling draft horse loses the bonus — and tabled it. The repossession clock now sits at 17 days before the Arcane Reclamation Initiative can seize the Golden Chalice.
Ambush in the Woods
On the very first stretch out of the Quandrix forest, Red — traveling with a small aviary now (his raven Bama, Leif’s owl Howl, and Asha’s hawk Astra) and having cast Speak with Animals — caught a bird-call that was wrong: a person mimicking a signal to someone ahead. He sent Bama to scout, and the raven found a man in the trees. It was an ambush.
Combat broke out against a five-strong bandit crew — the Eyes (their archer/lookout, barely a fighter), the Slicer and the Cutthroat (dagger duelists), a hulking Muscle, and eventually their Boss, called in as reinforcement. Highlights:
- Red wild-shaped into a giant spider — and it worked too well. Aren, viscerally repulsed, spent much of the fight hurling Sacred Flame at her own ally, muttering “abominations should not be tolerated.” Red’s giant-spider poison bites finished off both the Eyes and the Slicer.
- Úlfr deliberately held his rage in check at first, taking hits in stride and swinging Leith Chantos’s Legacy (his new sentient greataxe, which has a cleave), before finally letting the rage loose on the Muscle.
- Leif dropped the Eyes and Cutthroat with Tasha’s Hideous Laughter and chipped away with Eldritch Blast; Drolta worked Inflict Wounds, Hex, and Mind Sliver; Asha rained Fire Bolt and sent Astra diving in.
- Asha used a Portent roll to turn one of Úlfr’s misses into a hit; he thanked her with Bardic Inspiration. Úlfr also spent charges of Snorri’s notebook to shave damage off incoming attacks.
- The Muscle fell to Úlfr and Drolta. The Boss, badly outmatched, took the Disengage and fled into the woods — and Aren noticed he didn’t run randomly: he made straight for a particular spot, as if toward someone waiting.
The party chose not to pursue. Loot: a greataxe (Muscle), a longbow (the Eyes), and four daggers (Cutthroat & Slicer) — to be sold in town.
Camp, and the Dreams
The party made camp in the trees. With the Satyr rolls now ticking each day for Tobin and Simone, the night brought dream rolls — and several rough ones (Leif, Asha, and Drolta took exhaustion; Red rolled a Nat 20 for inspiration; the dreams themselves carried weight):
- Asha’s dreams braided together several recurring visions. A woman in black and red — winged, with talons for hands and wings of talons — holding the chalice. And a different woman, robed all in white and godly, drinking from the chalice while holding a book, a lance, and a white gown/cloak. Tallying the objects — chalice, lance, book, dress — the party now believes these are the Sinful Spoils (or several of them). Notably, neither woman matches the Academy’s wanted poster of the Seeker.
- Leif’s dream — his usual nightmare where everything turns yellow and he hears The Whispering One speaking in its unknowable voice. This time the voice came from Howl, and the owl’s eyes went completely yellow. Leif fears the Whispering One may be trying to take (or speak through) his familiar.
- Drolta’s dream — someone she deeply loved at the Nephthys temple, now with blood-red eyes and fangs. She fears vampires may still be active at the temple they’re approaching, and that this homecoming will be “a little rough.”
The party relayed the Sinful Spoils theory to Tobin via the Sending Stones — and promptly ran into the stones’ 25-word limit, forcing a telegram-style message (“…spoils are: dress, lance, book, chalice. Tobin, keep eye out for…”). Tobin replied: “Will do — will continue to check what the Academy knows.”
On-the-road conversations
- Red tried to make peace with Aren over the spider, promising to avoid the form and reminding her “it’s me, I’m your friend.” Aren gave him nothing: “Spiders are abominations. They must be dealt with.” Clearly old trauma she won’t discuss.
- Leif and Drolta traded dreams and a bit of warlock solidarity; Drolta confided her fear of finding devastation (or worse, someone turned) at her old temple, and resolved to warn the group to stay vigilant for vampires. Leif worried aloud that the Whispering One might be reaching for Howl, and Drolta urged him to ask Nephthys about it.
Freedale — A Town the Curse Nearly Took
Two and a half days on, the party reached Freedale — an older town (~2 centuries) on the western edge of Artmegía’s civilization, and one of the places hit hardest by the White Forest curse. Only about 20% of the population has returned; buildings sag with holed roofs and boarded windows, and the few residents look worn.
At a chicken-and-beer tavern full of orcs (Freedale has become an accidental fishing town, drawing orcs up from the Expanse to chase a prized freshwater mackerel), a friendly barmaid — herself a former worshipper at Drolta’s temple — laid out the town’s history and the clearest firsthand account of the curse yet:
- Before the vines came, strange omens: children vanished for stretches of time and then returned unharmed, and the trees around town began turning white.
- When the cursed vines came within sight of Freedale, everyone who could fled; the few who stayed to wait it out or fight mostly died.
- The vines eventually receded on their own (no one knows why); returnees spent years clearing the decayed, ivy-and-thorn-choked ruins.
- The Academy has told them nothing and offered no real help — a familiar grievance.
The party scoped the town: a smithy (to offload the bandit loot), a stable (six horses; 75 gp to buy, 25 gp/week to rent; secured at night by a single flimsy padlock), the General Goose Store (fishing and general goods), and a nicer private residence with a sunroom. Úlfr repeatedly floated stealing the horses — even donning a Disguise Self as a shifty-looking stranger — but the rest of the party, unwilling to rob a town still crawling back from ruin, talked him down. They’d buy or rent in the morning; the horses aren’t going anywhere.
The Temple of Saturn
A courtyard statue drew Úlfr’s eye; a Religion read identified the winged, crowned figure as Saturn, the Agent of Judgment. Fittingly, the temple loomed over Úlfr’s schemes for a free horse — the party ribbed that acquiring horses that way would earn them a day in a court of law.
The Witch’s Tower
The tavern-keeper explained the wizard’s tower at the town’s edge: it belonged to a witch named Morgana, who — before the curse fully reached Freedale — went into the White Forest to fight whatever was coming, and never returned. Rumor holds that when the vines swallowed the town, they carried her body back and left it at the tower — a cruel joke, if true. Most locals give the place a wide berth; they say it’s haunted.
That was all the invitation the party needed. Approaching, Aren used her pendant to Detect Undead and froze: a strong undead presence, somewhere beneath the ground under the tower. “There’s something unnatural beneath the earth here.”
The front door was locked and unyielding. Spotting a third-floor balcony, Drolta (dhampir-nimble) scaled the wall with ease and dropped a rope. Úlfr hauled himself and Leif up — but the rope snapped, leaving Asha and Aren stranded below. Through the balcony’s glass doors the climbers glimpsed a dining room and bedroom; Úlfr shattered the glass with his axe and the party pushed inside.
Loot & Resources
| Item / Resource | Notes |
|---|---|
| Greataxe (bandit Muscle) | To sell — Freedale smithy |
| Longbow (the Eyes) | To sell |
| 4 daggers (Cutthroat & Slicer) | To sell |
| Inspiration → [[Harlan “Red” Reed | Red]] |
| Bardic Inspiration → [[Asha Nyvani Korré | Asha]] |
Open Threads
- Morgana’s Tower (the cliffhanger) — a “haunted” wizard’s tower with a strong undead presence buried beneath it, its owner lost to the White Forest. The party is inside; this is next session’s dungeon.
- The Sinful Spoils identified — Asha’s dreams point to chalice, lance, book, and a white gown, wielded by two mysterious women (a black-and-red winged, taloned figure and a godly figure in white) — neither matching the Academy’s wanted poster. Tobin is digging.
- Drolta’s Vampire Dream — a loved one from the Nephthys temple, now fanged and red-eyed. Vampires may still hold the temple the party is walking toward.
- The The Whispering One & Howl — Leif’s patron may be reaching through his owl familiar (yellow eyes, the voice speaking as Howl). Drolta will consult Nephthys.
- Aren’s Spider Phobia vs. Red’s new form — her established, violent aversion to spiders (see Sessions 0 & 6) now collides with Red’s Circle of the Moon giant-spider shape, straining their bond. She refuses to discuss the root of it.
- The Escaped Bandit Boss — fled toward someone waiting in the woods (per Aren). A camp, an accomplice, or something more?
- The White Forest Curse — firsthand — Freedale confirms vanishing-then-returning children and whitening trees preceded the vines. New detail for the White Forest mystery.
- S.A.T.O. tasks running — Tobin (Sinful Spoils) and Simone (Asha’s star-tablet donor) roll daily; the Sending Stones’ 25-word cap complicates coordination.
- The repo clock — 17 days before the Arcane Reclamation Initiative can seize the Golden Chalice.
(Carrying forward: Pentamarone & the WitchCrafters, the Magistus, The Moon & Red’s dreams, vampires as witnesses to the Severance / Professor Valentine, and the true nature of Archibald.)
Next Session
The Fallen stand inside Morgana’s tower — Drolta, Úlfr, Red, and Leif on the upper floor amid a witch’s abandoned rooms, Asha and Aren still stranded below — with something undead stirring beneath the foundations. Into the witch’s tower.
→ Session 9 Recap — What the Witch Left Behind (the undead beneath the tower turned out to be ghouls feeding on Morgana’s body; the tower also held her papers, a scrying pool, and a construct the party can now command — see Morgana’s Tower.)